Walker

That was not a very scientific answer to Ralis' question...

One can forgive people without giving them a free license to carry on as usual. Forgiveness that allows endless repetition of that which needed to be forgiven is the basis of codependent abusive relationships, which are an endless waste of time and energy. It's entirely possible that you've seen the imperfections and dark sides of others here, including me. The devilish thing about blind spots is that they're hard for those who possess them to see. The reality of not being an immortal is to still be comprised of yin qi. Hopefully we will all gradually bring our blind spots to light and ceaselessly refine our qi. You might consider to keeping it in mind that if others' imperfections can be so glaringly obvious to you whilst those very same people remain very very VERY strangely oblivious to them, you might be suffering a very similar affliction!

Yes, I was just thinking about how, in Chinese medicine, fear is said to cause qi to descend. A few days ago, when he was terrified at the thought of suffering terrible damage from a "leaking dantian," Welkin's qi seemed to plummet and he suddenly evinced a newly humble demeanor. Within just a day or two, as his initial fear began to fade, his qi's downward dynamic did too. As they always will be unless they are truly worn away and transformed by the grist of real cultivation, his old habits were right there waiting for him, exactly where he left them. First he was explaining in detail why he was wrong and sorry but not ashamed and not ready to change. Now he's back to picking the same fights. Alas. Samsara as a wheel. Up, down, up, down, round and round. It is terribly difficult to reduce our tendency to be governed by the vicissitudes of qi, emotions, and imaginations run wild. Almost impossible without mentoring from elders who have walked the path. I haven't seen much that gives me hope for those who refuse to seek out teachers; even less for most of those who think they can teach themselves, save for a scarce few; almost no hope for those who skip the apprenticeship phases altogether and elevate themselves straight to teacherhood. If anything, TDB provides case study after case study of these types of madness.

五毛 means, more or less, "5 cents." comes from the term 五毛黨/wumaodang, which means something like "the 5 cent brigade." It is a reference to the army of people in China whose job it is to camp out on web forums, WeChat groups, Twitter, Facebook, news article comment walls, and so forth, filling them with pro-Chinese Communist Party jabber. I don't know how much they actually get paid for each post, but at the time when this term became popular, people said it was five mao, which is half of one yuan. If you do some Googling using some of what I wrote above you should be able to find some more info in English. This phenomenon is well-documented in China watching circles.

This restaurant analogy is exactly what I was thinking! I kind of get why people say we should be nice and let anything go here, but would the people who say that tolerate it if they were in a restaurant trying to have an adult conversation with friends and some "spiritual" dude who acts like a bizarre hybrid of Golem, Elmo, and a seagull on meth keeps coming over to the table and yakking about his enlightenment? Sure, you could "just ignore" the fellow, but would you "just ignore" this motherfucker if he sat down next to you at a bar and started jibbering at you and your buddies, forever, and ever, and evermore? Having to go out of one's way to ignore the determinedly obnoxious is the beginning of the death of discourse. These Spiritual Carrot Tops have obviously accomplished one qigong feat we all should envy: somehow they know how to tap into an infinite energy source that only seems to grow in power as time passes (I suspect that energy source is called "attention," and they don't really give a fuck if it's positive or negative in charge). Ignoring them does nothing to stop them, and since they have nothing better to do than post all day, they drag the conversations they latch themselves onto right into their weird realms, again and again. Then, as we have seen happen here, people who might've made valuable contributions walk away rather than waste their time by trying to be reasonable in the presence of fruitcakes who can't tell reason from a raisin. We all lose when that happens. Should a public internet forum be open all? Sure, but no more open than a public bar, restaurant, library, park, or bus. In other words, there's a broad spectrum of "acceptable"--the broader the better--but sooner or later if you can't let other people ride the damn bus in peace, child, you gotsta go.

Starting to feel like we're all playing in the orchestra on the Titanic... 2019 wasn't just protests and Fleabag: it was the year a climate truth bomb dropped Many of us suddenly woke up, stopped disassociating and realised the party was over Brigid Delaney When I think about 2019, there is one scene that springs to mind, something that sums up the milieu so perfectly that it almost seems art-directed. There we were two weeks ago at Rose Bay on the water’s edge, waiting for a private boat to take us to a harbourside mansion for a wine tasting. It was one of those days when Sydney’s air quality was among the worst in the world. The boat emerged from the pea soup gloom with the words “VIP” on the side. We were all in our party dresses and chunky trainers, phones fully charged to maximise the Instagrammable location, only coughing a little bit although peoples’ eyes were red and I noticed some fellow guests pulling on Ventolin inhalers. At the mansion there was a DJ, sommeliers and a chef, who explained in great detail the origin of the scallops on the canapes and a recent, inspirational trip to Oaxaca. Later there was a wine tasting where we gathered around to swirl and spit. Every varietal had notes of bushfire. Various people wandered up to us and said “great day for it!” and “beautiful weather” without irony. How could they say that? The sun was (there was only one word for it) demonic, a burning red eye in a thick smoky sky. The Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House were out there … somewhere, obscured in a brown haze. We stood near the pool, eating tiny food, drinking wine from large balloon glasses while ash flew from the sky, some of it landing in my drink. The DJ played on but the tunes – Tones and I, Mark Ronson – were nervy, jangly and strangely discordant. The smell of the smoke had an almost chemical taint, and in between trying the pinot and moving on to the tempranillo, I wondered about the alchemy at work in this commingling of the elements: the ancient forests and its animals turned to columns of ash, collapsed and drifting through the air, settling on the water and soil; and later in and on my body after swimming in the dirty sea that morning and now swallowing particles of ash floating in my wine at the party on the harbour’s edge. (“At the end of the world,” my friend and I nervously joked.) More wine was poured and more people commented on the great weather (except for a sommelier who confessed sotto voce that he felt afraid), and influencers posed in the gloom on the jetty and by the swimming pool, seeing but refusing to see what was all around them: this red-raw sun, that dirty brown sky. The cognitive dissonance would have been funny had I not been so scared. It brought to mind F Scott Fitzgerald, a writer who understood more than most that decadent parties prefigure societal collapse. Had his novel The Great Gatsby been written now, the scene that day in Point Piper would not be out of place. Returning to shore in the haze, we could have been excused for thinking we were crossing the Styx – the mystical Greek crossing into the Underworld – and in this heightened state the day seemed more than the sum of its parts. Instead it served as both an elegy for the lost world that had disappeared beyond the haze and a portent of the world to come. That is what 2019 has come to mean to me: not the landslide elections and the global protests and Fleabag season 2. But the year some undeniable bomb dropped and dispersed its truth all around us in the form of dark particles in the air that didn’t just sit around us – but entered our bodies in unholy communion, its fine matter an anti-sustenance that made us sick and afraid. The truth bomb came in various forms: in the form of a girl (Greta Thunberg) whose eloquent rage finally caught the world’s attention and inspired millions around the globe to strike for climate action. The truth also came in the form of heat, smoke and fire. Even then, some people tried to ignore it. Ernest Hemingway had this famous line from his 1929 book The Sun Also Rises, which speaks to me of where things washed up in 2019: “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.” 2019 is the year of suddenly. Many of us were shaken awake from our cognitive dissonance this year as our weather patterns and climate conditions become ever more extreme. When wine turns to ash in your mouth, you can’t deny the new reality anymore. Yet some still live in a land of cognitive dissonance: the lump of coal brought to parliament; the haze over the city obscuring the flashing Christmas lights; dead bats falling from the sky because their sophisticated and highly evolved sonar systems are overheating and confused; beekeepers being traumatised and needing counselling after hearing the sounds of animals screaming as they burn to death; new types of megafires devouring entire ecosystems; the NSW premier opening a new zoo during these megafires with a commitment to “protecting wildlife”; and the prime minister disappearing without a word about the climate catastrophe – last seen boarding a business-class Jetstar flight bound for Hawaii; the Instagrammers posing on the jetty under the eye of Sauron, hoping that with the right filters, we can pretend the sky is blue. Cognitive dissonance is natural – it can make you feel safer, like the world is a more orderly, stable place than the reality, which is chaos. The end of this year makes me wonder how much during the years prior we have been engaged in unintentional acts of disassociation and dissonance. Maybe we had to, to survive the barrage of nonstop news – the dozen major scandals that emerge each week from Trump’s White House, the way that Brexit is important, boring and confusing all at once. It’s all too much so we just disassociate. It’s no wonder the hot illegal drug of 2019 – ketamine – is an anaesthetic, numbing your body and making you feel separate from your environment. People disappear, aptly, into the k-hole, the chemical equivalent of our political situation. “Like you’re watching your own life happen instead of living it,” said New York magazine, calling it “the party drug for the end of the world”. But 2019 was in many ways, for many of us, Year Zero. It was the year many of us stopped disassociating, woke up and realised the party is over.

Secret? We're all talking about this in a thread called "Appeal to Forum Community to Ban Member 'Everything.'” Democracy in action! I actually think things seem more transparent now than in the days of Moderator Warnings...

Looks okay to me, just note that 桃花 in the first sentence is in and of itself an allusion to romance between men and women. 桃花運, for example, means something like "luck with meeting a partner." Also, in the second line, 結果 is a pun, as it means to fruit, as well as to "create results." I would interpret 花開 as the arrival of a predestined partner or opportunity for coupling, and the fruit/result as marriage, or more specifically (since this is what marriage was always for until very recently), marriage + birthing of male heirs.

Ah, gotcha!

Good idea to get back on topic and off of pestering each other, fun though it is to try and pursue eternal youth by acting like we're still cranky toddlers Returning to the OP, I think it is a noble thing to wish to give donations to temples in China but in addition to the obstacle I talked about already here are some other considerations: I think it can be said that, generally speaking, religious institutions in China are doing quite (if not extremely) well financially. Much of the populace has been generous with their newfound disposable income, local governments support temple building that is likely to attract tourism, and some of the country's rich and mega-rich have seen to it that massive quantities of money have flowed into monastery and temple coffers. Buddhism has been the main beneficiary, but Daoism hasn't done badly, either. Here's a photo that illustrates what I mean: Ain't no gaunt cheekbones to be seen on any of those guys, and they're standing over practically a city of temples! Opulent sites such as the above can be found all over China now, and often they're nearly empty of people even pretending to be Daoists for their day jobs, to say nothing of actual cultivators (a complex I visited in Longkou, Shandong province last year that is nearly as big as what you see in the photo above only had one guy wearing a Daoist costume; the place felt barren of spirituality and I'd bet my bottom dollar he is basically a security guard in old-timey clothes). These concrete behemoths can be built in a year or two and often, though they fall under the jurisdiction of the Chinese Daoist Association, their real purpose is to attract tourists. It's really quite amazing--temples, even serious ones, struggle to find enough Daoists to fill their ranks (a minimum number is necessary to perform certain rituals) and staff their halls, despite the fact that there are now, according to a monk I know, more Daoists than there ever were at any time in history! Construction-mad China has plenty of ghost cities, and it has plenty of ghost temples to go with them. Sadly, because money flows so easily now and planning is often incredibly poor, I've also seen huge donations squandered by well-meaning monastics. One example that I am very privy to involves a temple that got a huge gift from a businessman who felt that rituals performed on his behalf helped him earn windfall profits. The money was spent to build a two-story retreat building, but the construction was so poorly executed that as soon as it was finished the entire place was stricken with such terrible mold that nobody could bear to live inside of it. Though it was a Daoist temple one hardcore Buddhist nun attempted to stick it out for awhile, but soon enough she gave up, too. I has lain fallow for years, never once put to good use. What a waste! Within an hour's drive of that place I know of a gigantic concrete Buddhist temple that was abandoned shortly after its construction when the master in charge died, and a half-finished mess of a Daoist temple built on land given to them after it was confiscated from a half-finished mess of a Buddhist temple! Sometimes I think it'd be better if we just gave most of this land back to the plants and animals, honestly. Now, despite everything I just said, I am quite certain there must be sincere cultivators in China who could use some support. Poverty remains rife for hundreds of millions of people there, and because so many financially solvent temples happen to be places that attract lazy (if not downright libertine and licentious) monastics, I know that some sincere cultivators choose not to live in them. Thus, I just wouldn't recommend making donations without doing some serious boots-on-the-ground exploration first to suss out the people, the temple, and the ways the money might be used. That is, unless you take a Diamond Sutra-inspired approach to giving, and you are content to make a donation and give no further thought to how it is used (which, from a certain standpoint, is also an approach with real merit). You'd probably need some good yuanfen, luck, and connections to find really sincere cultivators who really need the money. A place like the Zhongnan Mountains might be a place to look, but even it has become a magnet for tourists and, now, (I heard) luxury home developers, so I don't really know. In Taiwan I do know people in a group that has bought land and is undertaking sincere efforts to build the first dedicated Quanzhen monastery somewhere in the center of the island. I personally have mixed feelings about these things, as I think one more giant gash cut into forested earth to be covered with a pomp-and-circumstance concrete structure may not, in this day and age, bring humanity any closer to something resembling sanity. I might be terribly wrong, too, but the world is already crawling with temples, churches, mosques, and so on, and, well... look at us! Then again, I personally have benefited tremendously by the fact that these places exist in very tangible ways, and perhaps we all benefit even more so in ways that are impossible for the naked, mortal eye to see. One famous Buddhist who has spoken directly of this dilemma, 净空法師/Ven. Jingkong, said he takes no money for temple building, and uses it for DVDs and book printing, only. His use of donations also benefited people (including me, as I watched one of his long video courses and learned a lot), so at one point I tried to copy it on a small scale and raised several thousand dollars worth of RMB to print a Daoist book in China. However, the project has been on hold for years now thanks to the political climate. In fact, when the CCP decided they could no longer abide by Ven. Jingkong's growing influence (his teaching materials made it into the homes of millions and millions of Chinese people), they began a crackdown a couple of years ago, and communist cadres were sent to all Buddhist and Daoist temples in the land to confiscate his books and DVDs and destroy them. It's very tricky to try and be of help in the religious world (or via NGOs, public interest law firms, indie media, or anything you can imagine except silently sending positive vibes) in the PRC these days. If all of the above sounds a bit chaotic, well, it is! There are real-deal Daoists still, including some young ones that I've met over the years who will carry on the tradition, but they're not always the first people you'll meet. I hope you have luck finding a worthy project to support, and if you want further help (including possibly with finding a suitable project in Taiwan), feel free to PM me. Good luck!

Or you could just: https://www.hostingadvice.com/how-to/how-to-start-a-forum/

Yes, this is very esoteric, and of course very interesting--thank you for sharing. I was lucky enough to meet one old Daoist master who taught his students, including one of my teachers, this way. But he left the world some years ago and I do not know if my teacher (who, while being a mentor of mine for two decades is not one of my primary teachers in terms of what I actually practice) developed similar capabilities. As you say, these things are unusual to come across. It is impossible for me to read everything you wrote above without feeling as though your are suggesting that Damo Mitchell can also see his students' development on a "causal" level, too. Is that what you're implying? _____________ Aside: What a breath of fresh air. A bunch of adults who are hardly in agreement about everything having a sane, coherent, on-topic discussion without any agenda-driven shitposting, bizarre new agey preaching, or (thus far haha) ruffled feathers. Thanks, @sean, for recently switching the 甘草 and 大棗 in the forum's daily medicine for a bit of much-needed 巴豆 and 芒硝!

Ah, your cover is blown, I should have known you were a member of the Nerd Pai. I'd never be seen dead in a room with members of that lineage 😁 You know though, if he's teaching the full Hunyuan system, then that would seemingly have to include the neigong that Feng Zhiqiang learned from Hu Yaozhen, who was a xinyi and Longmen guy. Longmen is so big and variegated that two teachers not only might teach entirely different things, but these things might even end up in conflict (speaking from personal experience). So if he's teaching the Hunyuan system and something else too that we're not allowed to name here, I dunno, it really does seem to me like we're inevitably speaking about a blending of systems. I think blending is as much a part of the tradition as topknots. It's always been there in neidan lines, including well-documented in the first generation of Quanzhen disciples and even more so by the third or fourth generation, especially when Quanzhen went south and immediately bumped into Qingwei, Qingjing Zhongxiao, Zhengyi, and other forms of Daoism. Some teachers probably passed on a mixed bag where it's hard to be clear about the origins of everything they taught, while others like an early Quanzhen master on Wudang, 張守清/Zhang Shouqing, explicitly passed different lineages to different students. In terms of Mitchell, again, I don't know how we can say he's only teaching one thing if he's actually teaching several. Having studied briefly with one of Hu Yaozhen's daughters it's hard for me to believe one could teach the Hunyuan system in a way that would not interact with alchemy (granted, perhaps in good ways).

Possible! It says the following on the link you provided: Within his school of Lotus Nei Gong, Damo now teaches primarily the Yang system of Taijiquan from within the Huang Xingxian method to new students. More advanced practitioners progress into the Zhaolin methods whilst only close students have the option of learning the Hunyuan system due to the painstaking amount of time it can take to teach the style. You mean the inner alchemy he teaches is solely from a specific line?

The accusation was made a half dozen years ago; I think my friend was upset because he saw teachings he thought were "stolen" from Feng in a book of Mitchell's. That said, I checked his website going back to 2008 on Archive.org just now and it seems he has always acknowledged being a student of Hunyuan Taiji and at times given credit to Feng Zhiqiang on his site. Seems fair enough to me that he might teach some of the things he learned from Feng, but then again that's always a bit of a grey area--it is not at all uncommon for teachers (especially traditional Chinese ones) to feel that students have no right to teach what they're learning to anybody else unless expressly authorized to do so. On the other hand, some teachers are very open about this, and others seem to have ambiguous stances. A bit late to ask Master Feng for his thoughts, though, alas... Anyway, even if I am remembering things exactly right and my friend did indeed see unattributed Hunyuan teachings in Mitchell's writings, given that he's open about his training history in his bio, I personally would give him the benefit of the doubt that it was an accidental omission or oversight, not theft. As for whether or not he was given permission to teach these things (if he indeed is/was teaching them), at this point I guess that's something between him, the late Master Feng, and King Yama! Is what you mean about lineage that in addition to the many teachers and lineages Mitchell studied with, there is one that is central to his teachings and which he officially is empowered to represent and transmit to his students? Is that a Daoist lineage?

You noticed that I'm thoughtful!

Pffffffffffft, you used the word monastery till you edited your post 14 minutes ago, dear "mature and rugged individual" lol. Thank god you don't live somewhere for "immature seekers who need rules and babysitting," your abbot would probably go broke replacing all the canes he'd have to break on your head. No wonder monasteries need donations...

I think there really might be something to this. A source I know well and trust used to study at the late Feng Zhiqiang's school in Beijing. He said Mitchell showed up for awhile (can't remember if it was weeks or months, definitely not more than a few months), trained, and then went his way. Common enough in martial arts schools China, but what stood out is that Mitchell--according to my friend--put some of Feng's exercises into his curriculum without attributing them to Feng, much less explaining their context. Not necessarily a problem in and of itself to do some mixing and matching, but if this story is true, the question is why not attribute the moves to the line from which they came? And also, what might be lost if attribution is not given? I tried to read his book with a title like Taoist Neikung a few years ago, and also once or twice have given his recordings a shot. Always have the exact same reaction as Taomeow... A few minutes in, though I can't place a finger on exactly why, he's lost me...

Monasteries are where monks and nuns live, right? You are a monk? Don't you fuck and smoke weed?

Nope. Currently I believe that overseas donations to religious entities are taxed at ~30%, minimum 20%, when donations come from overseas. I am involved in getting donations to a temple once a year and it is a major hassle that involves transferring money to a rich businessman in the west who has bank accounts in China and the US. He gets cash in the US and then transfers the equivalent to the temple from his PRC accounts via WeChat in small increments to the account of an individual in China who then has to get the money to the temple in cash later on. Sometimes he can do 10,000 yuan at a time, but sometimes that sum inexplicably locks his account and he has to wait several days and can start again with a 3,000 yuan WeChat transfer. This 麻煩 has been getting worse for the last few years. I'm always embarrassed asking for his help but luckily he is willing to help as he has some 道緣 and is committed to assisting us. Bitterwinter.org gives a taste of how dire things are at some temples nowadays. Donations from overseas, in addition to being taxed, may also draw unwanted attention. Beginning circa 2017 all NGOs in the PRC came under the purview of the inaptly-named Public Security Bureau. The Taoist Restoration Society closed up shop long before then, but nowadays it would be far harder for anybody to do what they once aimed to. If you come across any organization claiming to have a similar function, probably best to double and triple check their background! 總之, fuck Xi Jinping. 笑臉虎呀，肏日牠的血B。

Does "or greater" refer to iron mankini?

You're welcome. Go find out

Almost certainly not.

Well, I struggle to believe that he's not fooling himself and credulous viewers on YouTube, but who knows. Hopefully he does not get struck by lightning pointing that metal sword at the sky during thunderstorms. Or catch one hell of a cold getting soaked to the bone in his Raiden costume like that. I see. If you have such a lofty goal it is generally advised to start with small steps. Cultivate lots and lots of yinde/陰德; learn to diminish and diminish some more your passions and desires; turn your goal into a goalless goal; be patient; be yet more patient; study widely; visit numerous teachers but beware becoming infatuated or getting drawn into the hidden dark sides of those who are not what they seem (waiting at least three years before considering formal initiation is common, ancient advice); be circumspect and keep all of these things at an arm's distance; remember that progress is made over years and decades, not weeks and months; forget yourself; know when to stop; model your speaking-to-listening ratio upon your mouth-to-ear ratio; cultivate more yinde. I know no more than that, can offer little more than advice to be cautious and beware of seeming "eureka" moments, very often they're very deceptive.

OMGLMFAO @ 18:00. Is this a documentary or a mocumentary?? There are always obstacles. Since ancient times aspiring students of Daoism have faced the exact same problem, and until quite recently generally solved it by walking all around the gigantic landmass we now call China on foot. The advice and comments you've already gotten are quite sage. What are your specific goals? There is a very big difference between inner alchemy and trying to learn how to influence the weather using Daoist magic.